Europe in the Midwest: Heritage centers help travelers connect to the past

On a crisp, spring morning, five men gathered for breakfast at Suomi Home Bakery & Restaurant in this town in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula as sunlight poured through the window next to their table.

There was coffee all around as they ordered items like pannukakku, an oven-baked pancake filled with custard, and nisu, a cinnamon-swirl bread served toasted.

Before the food arrived, the guys were deep in conversation — in Finnish, the language their ancestors spoke when they arrived to swing pickaxes into the U.P.’s rich veins of copper.

“Believe it or not, there’s quite a population of young people who are still learning the language,” said Gabe Olson, 32, who’s by far the youngest of those gathered at Suomi, the homeland’s name in Finnish.

A few miles away in Chassell, Finnish is still taught in the local schools. Chassell is also where saunas, a common sight in backyards, are made.

Red McCoy and Tammy Waisanen, owners of Keweenaw Saunas, say the tales of hardy Finns sweating in a “sow-nuh” before jumping into the nearest pond or snowbank are totally true.

“The Finnish tradition is a bath (sauna) on Wednesdays and Saturdays,” McCoy said.

Throughout the Midwest, where foreigners planted their seeds, descendants are embracing their heritage. They’re tracing their roots at places like Finlandia University’s Finnish American Heritage Center in nearby Hancock, and they’re urging visitors to learn about the immigrant struggles of the 19th century and how those hardships parallel modern-day life.

The street signs are bilingual in Hancock, just across a shipping canal from Houghton. Finland’s Independence Day, Dec. 6, is cause for festivities bigger than those on the Fourth of July. Midsummer brings great revelry. This month, people will flock to “Juhannus” gatherings June 22-24 for dancing, folk music and a giant bonfire, all to welcome the summer solstice.

In Belgium, Wis., the Roots and Leaves Museum, located in an old stone barn at the Luxembourg American Cultural Center, features a steel tree with branches bearing photographs of more than 300 immigrants and their descendants. The metal roots extend into actual soil from the tiny grand duchy in Europe.

“Our mission is symbolized by that tree, to preserve the roots of our ancestry,” said Sara Jacoby, the center’s executive director.

The museum shares the stories of settlers who took low-skilled, low-paying jobs that didn’t require them to know English. The language barrier that fomented discrimination still resonates today.

“It’s a way to compare white European immigration to current immigration … to hold that mirror up,” Jacoby said.

Throughout this year, the cultural center is assisting Americans who want to claim dual citizenship. Shirley Roller-Lee — who travels to Wisconsin from her Belmont, Calif., home twice a year to research her ancestry — is among those who have obtained citizenship in Luxembourg.

“It was just to connect more with my roots,” she said. “I’m not going to move to Europe.”

Iowa’s stellar National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library stresses the values of dignity, freedom and human rights. A 1½-story structure beside the museum called the Sleger Immigrant Home shares the lives of five generations of Slegers. Having left Bohemia, a region in what’s now the Czech Republic, in 1890, members of the family lived in the modest dwelling until 1984.

In Minnesota, on the outskirts of New Ulm, the sign reading “Willkommen” reveals the town’s rich German history. It’s hard to miss the soaring “Hermann the German,” a symbol of Teutonic heritage since 1887. The Glockenspiel, another towering attraction, is a carillon clock that chimes every 15 minutes, with animated figures appearing at noon, 3 p.m. and 5 p.m.

Germans are often associated with beer, and the brewing tradition continues in New Ulm at Schell’s Brewery, in operation since 1860. Tours are held daily in the summertime with tastings afterward in the taproom. The town also hosts what’s often ranked among the country’s best Oktoberfests.

A roughly three-hour drive west of Chicago, the tiny town of Bishop Hill, population 125, appears frozen in the 1850s, when the first Swedes arrived on the Illinois prairie.

“We have a lot of Swedish visitors who say that, in some ways, we’re more Swedish than Sweden is now,” said Todd DeDecker, administrator of the Bishop Hill Heritage Association. Both his group and the state of Illinois own buildings in the village.

“There’s not too many places in the Midwest that have 18 pre-Civil War buildings and a half-dozen Civil War-era buildings that are still in their original spots and still in use today,” DeDecker said.

At multiple locations, the story is told of how Bishop Hill paved the way for a mass exodus from Sweden.

“That was the start of the Great Migration, where a quarter of the Swedish population left the country, with many of them coming to the United States, but not necessarily Bishop Hill,” DeDecker said.

“Midsommar,” to be celebrated June 23, provides a good opportunity to tour not only Colony Church and other historic sites, but to take part in cultural activities tied to the solstice. That afternoon outside the school, people will decorate a traditional maypole before joining hands for ring dances around the pole. The festivities also include Swedish music from morning to night, culminating with an old-fashioned barn dance.

But, unlike in Michigan’s U.P., don’t expect to hear people speaking the language of their ancestors.

“There isn’t one person who can speak Swedish fluently,” DeDecker lamented. “It’s been lost over the generations.”

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